Of course, in such an infidel and revolutionary age as that of Louis XV., when Voltaire was the oracle of Europe,—­when from his chateau near Geneva he controlled the mind of Europe, as Calvin did two centuries earlier,—­enemies would rise up, on all sides, against the Jesuits.  Their most powerful and bitter foe was a woman,—­the mistress of Louis XV., the infamous Madame de Pompadour.  She hated the Jesuits as Catharine de Medici hated the Calvinists in the time of Charles IX.,—­not because they were friends of absolutism, not because they wrote casuistic books, not because they opposed liberal principles, not because they were spies and agents of Rome, not because they perverted education, not because they were boastful and mercenary missionaries or cunning intriguers in the courts of princes, not because they had marked their course through Europe in a trail of blood, but because they were hostile to her ascendency,—­a woman who exercised about the same influence in France as Jezebel did at the court of Ahab.  I respect the Jesuits for the stand they took against this woman:  it is the best thing in their history.  But here they did not show their usual worldly wisdom, and they failed.  They were judicially blinded.  The instrument of their humiliation was a wicked woman.  So strange are the ways of Providence!  He chose Esther to save the Jewish nation, and a harlot to punish the Jesuits.  She availed herself of their mistakes.

It seems that the Superior of the Jesuits at Martinique failed; for the Jesuits embarked in commercial speculations while officiating as missionaries.  The angry creditors of La Valette, the Jesuit banker, demanded repayment from the Order.  They refused to pay his debts.  The case was carried to the courts, and the highest tribunal decided against them.  That was not the worst.  In the course of the legal proceedings, the mysterious “rule” of the Jesuits—­that which was so carefully concealed from the public—­was demanded.  Then all was revealed,—­all that Pascal had accused them of,—­and the whole nation was indignant.  A great storm was raised.  The Parliament of Paris decreed the constitution of the Society to be fatal to all government.  The King wished to save them, for he knew that they were the best supporters of the throne of absolutism.  But he could not resist the pressure,—­the torrent of public opinion, the entreaties of his mistress, the arguments of his ministers.  He was compelled to demand from the Pope the abrogation of their charter.  Other monarchs did the same; all the Bourbon courts in Europe, for the king of Portugal narrowly escaped assassination from a fanatical Jesuit.  Had the Jesuits consented to a reform, they might not have fallen.  But they would make no concessions.  Said Ricci, their General, Sint ut sunt, aut non sint.  The Pope—­Clement XIV.—­was obliged to part with his best soldiers.  Europe, Catholic Europe, demanded the sacrifice,—­the kings of Spain, of France, of Naples, of Portugal.  Compulsus feci, compulsus feci, exclaimed the broken-hearted Pope,—­the feeble and pious Ganganelli.  So that in 1773, by a papal decree, the Order was suppressed; 669 colleges were closed; 223 missions were abandoned, and more than 22,000 members were dispersed.  I do not know what became of their property, which amounted to about two hundred millions of dollars, in the various countries of Europe.